While the old woman climbed out of the boat he held sleeping Mobious with one arm and with the other hand reached up and undid the silver clasp lying in the hollow of his neck. He held it out to her, dangling the clasp.
“One more question.”
“What?” She snapped at him, staring at the necklace.
“Is this village Pace?”
“Yes.”
Hardt looked carefully into his mother’s eyes but saw nothing that compelled him to stay. With deep regret he dropped Vyck’s necklace into the horrid woman’s waiting palm and turned away, walking back to his dragons. He reached the space where Sophie had dropped him off before something deep in his heart made him turn back. The old woman hadn’t moved.
“Nadi, did you love the son you lost?”
For just a moment he thought he saw a glint of humanity in her eyes, but then she shoved the necklace into a pocket and looked away. “I didn’t lose him. He was mine and he was stolen from me.”
“But your grandson is named after the woman who stole Hardt.”
“My son is a romantic idiot, just like his aunt.”
“Yes. He is.” Hardt told her and he walked away.
He returned to Sophie and Nahni with a heavy heart. He climbed up and spoke only to assure them of Mobious’ improvement and to direct them to return to the dTelfur village where Nyah or one of the nursery healers could check Mobious over and keep an eye on him.
Edwarg was the healer on duty in the infirmary when they reached the village shortly after dawn. The dTelfur healer whisked Mobious to one of the corner treatment platforms and sent an apprentice scurrying off for some internal mendicant to further counteract the poisons in the boy’s system.
“Pumpkin? Where did he get into pumpkins? I thought we’d wiped them all out after that last telf child died.”
“You wiped out pumpkins?”
“Yes. They’re virulently poisonous.”
Hardt hung his head in his hands. “I didn’t know that.”
“You’ve never encountered pumpkin before?” Edwarg took a closer look at Hardt as he took the medicine from his apprentice. “You have no reactions. Didn’t you contact the pumpkin?”
“It isn’t poisonous to landers. We…”
Realization dawned. Edwarg knew where they could have gotten pumpkin. He tried to stop Hardt. But too late. Konifer, lying in a nearby bed for the night with a busted ankle, had overheard the whole discussion and arrived at the same conclusion as Edwarg.
“You violated my edict against contact with landers.”
Hardt had met the man only twice, over fifteen sheddings ago, but he recognized him immediately. “Konifer, I am a lander.”
“By staying in the village, you have chosen to become a dTelfur.”
Hardt was amazed to realize that the dTelfur leader had recognized Hardt’s assimilation more than the lander himself had.
Konifer went on. “And if you want to be a dTelfur you must follow all our way of life, not just that which suits you.”
“Konifer, separatism is just going to increase the misunderstandings between our cultures.”
“The landers need time to cool down, Hardt.” The Vize stood, using a cane by the side of his bed to hobble over to the treatment platform. “If we keep our distance for just a little while, then we can try communicating again as we did when your people first arrived on this land. I spoke with your ancestors, with Greg and with Chyell, and I liked them. But I was young and I underestimated the difficulties we would face in trying to live together.”
“And their children haven’t been as open-minded.” Hardt stepped away from the platform where Edwarg was mixing the bitter medicine into a sweet apple juice.
“Your people wanted to carve out their own lives on this land without our help. I respected that choice and watched as the effort has changed you.”
“We wanted to grow. Life gets easier with every generation.”
“Exactly. You are working it out just as the dtur and telfs did when Nature ended our war and initiated our symbiosis. And each generation will improve on what the last has left them. What great harm am I doing by suggesting we let you alone until life is so easy that you are ready to face the challenge our existence presents?”
Hardt was not certain he agreed entirely with Konifer’s solution, but then he knew he wasn’t as patient as these long-lived creatures he’d chosen to make a life with. Dealing with that longer vision was one of the very challenges to which Konifer referred. He was only one man. The first Kimoet of Kaveg had spoken with this Vize and asked him for the very separation Hardt and Sophie and others were chafing against. To disrespect the separatism would satisfy Hardt, but it would go against the desires Chyell and Greg had had for the whole lander community and against the authority of the community he had abandoned the landers to join. To respect it he had choose between ever seeing Vyck again and raising Mobious with Sophie. And there was Mobious, lying helpless on the platform with huge and loving eyes refusing to drink the medicine-laced juice until Hardt stepped over and took the cup from Edwarg.
“I will respect your edicts, Konifer. I will have no more contact with the lander.”
“Good. Now go find Nahni and Sophie and bring them here. I want a full report of your contact.”
Hardt, exhausted, emotionally overwrought by meeting his dam and condemning himself to never see Vyck again, and holding the child he’d poisoned struggled to ignore the insensitivity of the order and moved to obey it.
Edwarg intervened. “No. Hardt and Mobious are going to curl up over here and get some sleep. I will go tell Sophie and Nahni that Mobious is okay and you, Konifer are going to go back to the burrow and relieve me of the chaos of your constant meetings. You will elevate and chill that ankle or risk my displeasure and you will await my release of Mobious before you question any of them.” The healer stood at the foot of Konifer’s bed, daring the Vize to challenge him. “He respected your authority. Now you respect mine.”
Konifer grudgingly allowed Edwarg to help him back to his rooms in the bower. On his way back, the healer found Sophie and Nahni waiting anxiously outside the infirmary with Mobious’ favorite blanket from the falls side bower. After yelling at them for not knowing how dangerous pumpkin was to telfs, he allowed them both to go inside and curl up around the small bed where they found little Mobious with his arms wrapped as far around Hardt as he could reach.
Eleven
∞
The sun rose quickly over the flat landscape to the east but the golden shades of its warmth were slow to burn off the early morning chill of late summer. Hardt finished relieving himself and returned to the cave he and Tareay were burrowing in for a few days. She rolled over to entangle him as he lifted the covers and slid back in beside her warm body. She laughed as his hip, knee, and ankle each popped in protest.
“My old man, you’re falling apart.”
“My legs are fine. It’s my shoulder that doesn’t work anymore.”
“Just say the word and we’ll have snakecat for dinner.”
“I don’t blame the cat.”
“That’s right.” She kissed the old shoulder wound and on down the arm to the scar he had from Sophie. “You think you earned the wounds.”
They lay in silence a while, Tareay letting her thoughts drift, Hardt drifting back into dreams. It wasn’t long, maybe a year, maybe two since Mobious’ near death by pumpkin.
“Hardt.”
The concern in Tareay’s voice woke him instantly. “What is it?”
“Relax. It’s not that urgent.” She laid a smooth hand on his chest and then pulled on the coarse grey hairs that were amassing amidst the curly black ones. She slid her fingers along them, letting them escape and sproing back into curls one by one. Hardt watched her for a moment and then reached out a hand and turned her worried face up to him.
“What is it, youngster?”
Her eyes avoided his. “I’m nearly a hundred sheddings older than you.”
“I don’t s
hed.” He was joking but she took him seriously.
“I know. Your body is going to wear out.”
“You’re scared you’ll have to watch me age and die.”
“A little, yes. But more, I was thinking of Mobious.”
Hardt sat up.
Tareay continued. “Sophie is already very old. And Nahni is a good sister but she’s only a child. When you go, if you live a full hundred sheddings, she’ll still be younger than I was when we met. Mobious will be barely an adolescent.”
“Do you want to help raise Mobi, Tareay?” Hardt looked at her in surprise. She’d never expressed any interest before. She was a loner, hunting even with whichever dragon was interested in getting away for a while. He’d never expected her to want anything to do with children.
She didn’t. “No, Hardt. I like our arrangement just as it is. I was just thinking you may not have realized that by dying, you’ll be leaving a young boy all alone. Plus you’re atchs. You didn’t see what dTserra’s death did to Sophie and they were both grown adults.”
“You’re saying that Sophie will die before me and I’ll likely die long before I reach the hundred mark. You’re thinking I should find someone else to raise him.”
He watched as she rose and searched around for her clothes. “I just think you might find a good friend for him. Someone older than Nahni, who can explain it to him when you die.” She leaned over him and kissed him warmly on the lips, whispering before she turned away and left him alone in the cave, “and I won’t do that.”
Hardt was still thinking about her words a few hours later as he swam upstream from the top of the waterfall. When he got to the bridge he climbed out, walked out to the middle, and laid down, feeling the wind all around him like he was lying on a hard, splinter-covered, cloud held up in the sky by brittle vine-covered elastic ropes. He’d lain here before when he needed to concentrate. It was like tramping through the swamp back in Stray. The only way to relax was to forget his surroundings and let his mind flee into its own world.
Already he’d fallen in to the living patterns of the dTelfur. Once again, Sophie’s oft quoted admonition was right, he’d forgotten he was different. Even though he was clearly aging faster than anyone around him. He’d forgotten about death. What kind of fool he wondered, swinging in the gusty wind, what kind of enormous fool forgets about death? He was like Sophie and Edwarg and the other old dTelfur now. He couldn’t remember how old he was. Time was measured for him in events and he marked it no other way. He could recall all of Mobious’ sheddings and a few of Sophie’s and Deg’s as well but they weren’t trully yearly as he had been led to believe. Mobious was born in the dying season but had his first shedding the following spring. Deg shed in the growing season after the southern burrow entrance collapsed but didn’t shed again until well into fall of the following frseason just before Mobious’ fourth miracle.
Sophie felt it was important to minimize the significance of the miracles to Hardt though it was clear to him that Mobious was the only hatchling performing them. He assumed she had her reasons. Hardt wanted to ask why Mobious hadn’t saved himself during the pumpkin incident when he had almost immediately afterwards saved Dorat and Janen the architect by turning the collapsing earth of the burrow into solid rock, but they too had covered up the incident by shoring up the rest of the entrance with stone in the manner of the landers so no one could tell the difference. As far as Hardt could tell Deg was the only dTelfur who knew about the incident other than the five who had been present when the roof collapsed.
Mobi’s fourth miracle though, his fourth miracle had been awfully difficult to hide.
A large group of dTelfur had fought their way through a snowstorm to reach the hatching ground. In days before the festival tarp had been erected, the dTelfur had come out to protect the hatching dragons during rough storms. Now they came to keep them company.
Danny and Deg were covering the eggs with Hendry and Tcoa lying curled around their windward sides, moving as the winds did to shield the elder hatching dragons as best their smaller bodies could. Tian, Sophie, Akai, and Kerander were sitting around the edges trying to block the wind as well, but surreptitiously so the young hatchers wouldn’t feel their duties were being taken. Nahni was sitting by Deg’s head, deep in discussion with him about how a snowstorm here could affect the western crops next fall.
A few visiting farmers accustomed to weathering storms were joking with the locals about the same subject. Lahrea familiar with the visiting outlanders was responding with dreadful puns about the farmers’ dry wit.
Hardt listened to the banter from outside the circle of dragons. He and Mobious, bundled up in layer upon layer of clothing, were sitting in the biting wind building snow sculptures. Mobious was meticulously forming a castle while Hardt less accurately carved away at the form of a dragon. More of his attention was on the conversation than on his sculpting. The visiting farmer dtur, Peltine, had everyone in stitches. Through his joking stories though, Hardt could tell that there was real concern about the lack of moisture over the western lands where most of the dTelfur farms were located. The dtur played his concern off as jealousy of the poor villagers who had been complaining all afternoon about the harsh winter. He did a perfect imitation of Konifer refusing to magically transport the village to the west and the farms to the east.
“C’mon, Pelty, give the man a break. He does his best by us.” The farmer who was passing out hot drinks interupted the imitation, pouring some cider into Peltine’s huge bowl. “And we don’t need his magic as long as we’ve got you to drink up the lakes and release them over our fields.”
“Ha!” Peltine threw back his head and let out a mighty dragon laugh from deep in his throat. “He puts it so nicely. Let’s have him describe how I fertilize our fields too!”
The whole crowd protested.
“Well then, we could fly up now and blow these useful clouds westerly instead. How about it dtur, are you with me?”
Akai shouted over the loud dragonic response and won the next laugh, “No it won’t work, you’d melt the clouds with all that hot air.”
“I wonder if you could blow the clouds in a different direction though. It would be helpful to have more moisture on those fields.” The eldest farmer wondered out loud and then abandoned the fun-loving group for Deg and Nahni’s small discussion.
But Tian took up his train of thought. “I wonder if we could?”
“We could use the water if you want to try.” Pelty goaded the young dragon but before Tian could get airborne, his atch Viscier protested and Sophie laid a restraining tail on his back.
“Your wings would freeze out there and at that height.”
“But isn’t it worth a shot? If we can’t do it, we’ll be short on food next fall.” Tian argued.
The farmer dragon relented, “We’ll survive. We always have. You don’t need to risk your wings.”
Hardt saw Mobious look up from his play when Peltine suggested the dtur fly up and blow the clouds west. The boy looked over his shoulder at the dtur when they talked of Tian’s wings freezing off and of the village having no food. As the conversation turned away to lighter topics, Hardt watched Mobious look back down at his snowcastle sadly and then, for just an instant, up at the clouds. Then he returned to digging his moat.
The wind stopped whipping snow and ice around. It started blowing all in one direction – west. Hardt looked up with everyone else as the clouds were pushed away. Soon the sun was shining down and the dtur and telfs alike were dancing out from under the tarp.
While everyone else rejoiced and laughed, Mobious sat back and watched his little Forte sadly. After a while, he got up and wandered over to Hardt who had remained where he was on his knees. Hardt opened his arms and the boy leaned against his chest and fell into his lap. Then he turned and clambered up, grasping Hardt’s neck, and whispered in his ear, “I thought it would melt.”
Hardt asked his question carefully, “When you made the sun come out?”
“Well that was really nice of you then, to make the storm go away even though you thought the castle would melt.”
Mobious smiled modestly up at him.
“It’s really cold, so it’ll take the sun a while to melt that whole castle.” Hardt explained and added. “It’s a very nice Forte.”
Mobious whispered in his ear, “But there’s no pumpkin patch.”
Tareay was right. He should find someone to look out for Mobious when he and Sophie went on. Even now, he’d be better off with someone who could understand his miracles. As he got older, he’d need some guidance.
“He’ll need some guidance as he gets older.” An echo of his thoughts carried over the water as if the speaker were standing right next to him.
Hardt even thought for a moment that Sophie was speaking to him, but then he rolled to his side and saw her floating down the river with Deg.
“He has guidance.” Deg looked up at the swinging bridge.
“Hardt doesn’t know how to handle a baby vize.”
“Sophie, has anyone ever been able to handle a baby vize?”
Sophie snorted in frustration. “His sire would be better able.”
“I don’t understand, Sophie. Do you want Konifer to take Mobious away from you and Hardt?”
The river carried the two old dragons out of earshot as Sophie responded to the old hatcher in a fierce whisper. Hardt sat up on the bridge and watched them until they were carried out of sight. Deg was the reason behind Sophie’s silence on the matter of Mobious’ miracles. Deg didn’t want Hardt informed because he didn’t want Konifer to know.
Hardt sat on the bridge until his stomach complained then he got up and walked back to the bower for dinner. Sophie was not home so Mobious was either with her or at the nursery. Hardt made a quick dinner of fruit and bread and then swam across the river and hurried into the village to find the boy. He was still undecided about whether to approach Konifer with his new information when he ran into the man just outside the trees that marked the edge of the village. For something like twenty sheddings he’d lived in the village and never happened to run into Konifer. But now he did. He took it as a sign.
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 22